Jason Hong's Confabulations

A journalist asked me about cybersecurity under the Trump administration, whether anything will change. Here are my thoughts. Note that this is just my opinion and does not represent my employers or any of my funders. -------------- I don't expect much to change. President Obama already  made cybersecurity one of his top 10 priorities, and as a result, a lot of the heavy lifting has already started. However, there are still some opportunities for the  next administration . For example: A lot more research funds for longer-term thinking and solutions to big problems. Security today is dominated by the latest data breach, and there isn't enough funding for problems 5-10 years down the road, in particular Internet of Things. Another area that needs longer-term thinking and solutions is foreign countries interfering with elections . It's unclear how much happened this year, but it's only going to get worse. There are a lot of concerns that foreign countries are

I wrote up a white paper about the cybersecurity issues that we will face as the Internet of Things becomes more common. I discuss issues like physical security, scale, lack of experience by manufacturers, and lack of tools and best practices. One idea I also advance is this pyramid of IoT Devices. At the top tier we will all have a few devices that have a lot of computational horsepower, such as laptops, smartphones, and glasses. In the middle tier we will have dozens of devices that have moderate computational capabilities, but also only require a little bit of our attention. These include TVs, refrigerators, and smart toys. At the bottom tier are hundreds of cheap devices or ones that we are barely aware of. These include RFIDs, smart toilets, digital picture frames, electronic locks, smart meters, cheap environmental sensors, and more. The bottom two tiers are the ones we need to worry about the most. The top tier already has major tech manufacturers worrying about the cyb